a Final Fantasy XIII retrospective in four parts
i. design
I'm obsessed with this interview with FFXIII's director, where he compares his game to (of all things!) a first-person shooter. Just, wow. What a bold claim to make.
He's right. The corridors, the carefully curated encounters, the manufactured-yet-keenly-felt sense of urgency-all of this parallels clearly with FPSes. But I read this interview after I'd finished the whole game, and "FPS" didn't cross my mind once. Neither have I heard anyone else ever make this comparison, which I think helps explain why it took me three tries to really get into this game.
See, when I first played FFXIII, I think on some fundamental level I misunderstood what the game was trying to do. Having paradigms choose my actions rather than hitting the "attack" button felt weird and uncomfortable and loosey-goosey. I couldn't figure out what the hell the star ratings after battles meant or if they mattered. Difficulty seemed to spike in random places for no good reason. All that, combined with the lack of opportunities to grind, made me think: I'm bad at this, I don't get this, I don't understand what the hell's going on in this plot, I give up let's drink.
It wasn't until I watched some clips from a speedrun that I decided to pick it up again-because, speedruns being what they are, they're forced to exploit all the tricks early on, and watching how precise their timing was, how crucial speed was to battles, and watching the careful dance of stagger-locking enemies in action-all that made me desperate to try it out myself.
So no, this is not a JRPG in the tradition of FF6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or even 10. There's a huge emphasis on speed, you're always pushing yourself to finish encounters as fast as possible, and while you can limp through the game by just using the Diversity paradigm all day every day, it's so much more satisfying to twiddle and switch to get the most blazing-fast combination of paradigms possible.
This, combined with the urgency implied by the narrow-corridors go-go-go level design, meant that, when I reached the much-talked about "open world" section of the game, I actually felt angry. I didn't like it! I wanted more runrunrun gogogo. I didn't want to wander around and grind, despite the fact that I enjoyed that in other Final Fantasy games. I didn't enjoy it in this one because it's a whole different kind of game.
(Luckily the open world section was more on-rails than it initially seemed, and I could blitz through it pretty quick to get back to The Real Game!)
So, yeah, part of the reason I thought FFXIII sucked was just because I didn't get it the first two times around. To be clear, a lot of that is FFXIII's fault: the tutorial takes too long, and the difficulty takes too long to ramp up. (Difficulty is a way to force you to pay attention, and in the absence of "trying to pull off crazy speedrunner strats," I found my attention drifting away before the game started to actually demand it.) But even if FFXIII had done a better job on those fronts, I wonder if it would've been misunderstood anyway. It's very, very hard to make something that is subversive and radical and also a 40+ hour game that the audience has certain expectations of.
(It got me thinking about other series that have had very "subversive" or unusual entries. The first things that came to mind was Logan, which was stunning, and widely praised, despite being an-X-Men-movie-that-is-not-really-an-X-Men-movie. But Logan had the advantage of very obviously inserting itself into a well-understood movie genre from the start; you watch the opening scenes of Logan and you know you're in a old-school Western, Lonesome-Doves-Clint-Eastwood sort of universe. FFXIII, by contrast, isn't a traditional grinding-and-spells RPG, but it's not like any other RPG I can think of, combat-system-wise-so it would have to put in a lot of effort to show both what it is not and what it is.)
Anyway, I'm glad I gave it a third shot. It was a tremendously fun ride and kept me entranced throughout, which is a super non-trivial feat; I thought my days of 40-50 hour JRPGs were behind me and was delighted to find myself proven wrong.
ii. polish
Do I just like broken, incomplete things?
As I neared the end of FFXIII, I realized that, while I liked the game a whole damn lot, I wasn't ravenous about it the way I was with FFXV.
This, despite the fact that FFXIII is a far more polished game. Combat encounters are surprising and engaging throughout, and I relished the threat posed by "mob" encounters in particular; fighting a swarm versus fighting just a single enemy forced you to pay the fuck attention and move fast (a lá Clickers in TLoU) in the most delightful possible way. There's no towns or random people-partially because, Toriyama said in an interview, they felt like they couldn't get them to look and feel as polished and smooth and perfect as the rest of the game. So they cut them out entirely. And you feel that choice, in-game; everything is streamlined as possible. Finally, the story-while, yes, very rushed and unclear in its presentation-does feel very deliberate. Things that are foreshadowed come back later with resounding force; each character gets a full development arc; the resolution feels "whole" and unsurprising.
Compare this to FFXV's combat system, which does have a pleasing gut-feel in terms of zipiness, but is not particularly deep, and does not rise much beyond frantic button-mashing. Compare this to how much FFXV does only half-assedly: the random fetch quests (that mysteriously dry up about halfway through the game), the "open" world that is strewn with inexplicable invisible walls to constrain you, the shitty feel of driving the car, the utterly incomplete feeling of Tenebrae, and so on. Compare this to the number of plot threads that are dropped or come out of nowhere, and the ridiculous number of DLCs they've spent trying to "fix" what was left out. FFXV tries to do everything, and its enthusiasm is endearing, but the result is a bit of a mess
And yet. I was enamored with that mess. The same instinct that pulls me toward writing fanfiction for something (the need to fill in what was left out, the impulse to guess at the author's intent, the potential for subversions in what was left unstated) apparently just pulls me toward things in general.
It's a bit similar to how I tell everyone that The Mysterious Stranger is my favorite Twain novel-even though it was unfinished upon his death, and the version that exists nowadays is cobbled together from a few incomplete drafts. Because I like seeing the seams and the mess.
It's weird! I'm weird! Does anyone else feel this way?
(It may be related to Tevis Thompson's observation that immersive games need an underworld, and in lieu of a deliberately-designed area of shadows and dangers and broken things, something that's just messy and unfinished can provide a similar effect. FFXIII is very glossy and maybe it'd benefit from a bit of an undertow, without actually losing its overall tightness and polish.)
iii. okay the story though
FFXIII is almost the boldest, most modern plot of any Final Fantasy game I've played.
I got my first inkling of this near the opening, when Sazh complains in some vague way about "the government" not giving a shit about the people. And naturally my overthink-y brain was like-woah, what exactly does this government look like? Other games have tackled "the church" or "the corporations" or "the queen" as vague forces of oppression, but "the government" implies, y'know, some sort of vaguely-corrupt democratic-ish body, probably with neoliberal tendencies and ugly Gilded Age politics. My interest was piqued; what did this game have to say about the modern state?
It only got more intriguing later on-when we reach the Nutriculture Complex, the clear implication is that Cocoon's economy is post-scarcity, that the fal'Cie provide literally all the technogadgets and food and shelter for the people, and wow, what, doesn't that change everything about how Society in General is structured? What's the point of jobs in that world; what do jobs look like? What does social status look like? Has it always been this way? Is it a recent development? We're told people are whipped into a frenzy to hate and fear Pulse; if they've always known plenty, where does the fear come from?
And more abstractly: in a world where God is very literally real, what does duty and the "right thing to do" look like? (The game pulls an interesting move of having you attempt to kill God-that is, one of the fal'Cie-in the opening act, instead of waiting until the end like FF games usually do; it's a remarkably thrilling encounter for that reason-it's digging in early and digging in hard.)
And the game sort of wants to engage with some of these questions. It's obviously implied that Hope's family is loaded, which hints at some social status issues that are never explored in-depth. We're told Cocoon has "tens of millions" of people, so like, the population of Canada-which implies a big, post-industrial society, which implies a lot of interesting problems-but we don't get much more detail than that.
But fundamentally, the bulk of the game is about being on the run, about desperate full-speed ahead clawing survival, so we can't get much more detail. I mean, sure, our protagonists eventually talk a big game about "freeing" Cocoon from the fal'Cie, but I'm not sure I ever really believed them. I thought they were in a horrible mess of a situation and they were running desperate from solution to solution, until they found the one that would let them turn and bite back.
And of course they are. It's what I'd do, if the whole damn world were desperate to kill me. And it's what Fang does, by losing her shit in the very last act; she's talked some high-minded principles with the best of them, but she'll throw them aside if that what it takes to save Vanielle. Things end up with a happier resolution, of course-but due as much to a twist of fortune than any real change of heart.
So that's the story the game ends up telling, a bunch of desperate fugitives scrambling for a way to keep moving, and it's a good story. But God! do I want to know how this universe actually works.
iv. annnnd the characters
Because I need a foil, I naturally looked up The Hottest of Takes on this game-that is, gamefaqs message boards circa 2012-to see what folks generally thought about it near launch.
Apparently everyone hates Hope, which surprised me. In a lot of ways I felt like he got the most complete and compelling character arc, at least until very late game when we get more into Fang's background.
Sure, he's "whiny," I guess, compared to the other characters, but there's a bit of the nerds doth protest too much there. For all the "Shinji get in the fucking robot" jokes on the internet, I've met a huge number of teenage boys who secretly related to the dude.
And like-as someone who lived with my brother through his teenage years, and who was a camp counselor for mostly-teenage dudes for many summers-he feels like a typical teenage dude. For all teenage dudes like to act like they're these devil-may-care rapscallions-the cracks show, when you're around enough, and you overhear your brother's weird hysterical tear-y breakdown in response to getting grounded, and you notice the warped and trembling expression on a guy's face after he sees the girl he likes across the room with someone else, and you have to talk down some dude who's gotten so frustrated at his computer program that he's either gonna cry or punch something and you're not sure what.
And in some ways that's better than the coping mechanisms everyone else is using. Sazh keeps his own thoughts and feelings so close to his chest that it's impossible for anyone to help him or change his mind until it's almost too late. Lightning is a perfect portrait of Every Twentysomething I've Ever Met Who Deals With Emotions By Just Working Real Hard, a tactic that plays out just as badly in this game as it does in real life. So what if Hope's bitching and whining and freaking out? At least he's doing it openly, so that shit can get dealt with. It's a little irksome that he becomes so preachy by the time you hit endgame, but it also makes some sense-he's spent the whole game trying to work shit out by talking and doing and feeling, so seeing it pay off with a bit of maturity is nice.
And the mentor-like relationship between Hope and Lightning felt true to my experience, and quite resonant. Every camp counselor's familiar with how some kiddos will "cling" to you-not in a creepy or bad way, just, they're drawn by some charisma you possess, you're old enough to be wise but young enough to be cool, and they want to be you. Lightning's stoic demeanor and tersely-worded instructions reminded me of all the overconfident technobluster I possessed in my late teens and early 20's; her sudden horror that dear God this kid's actually listening to me and dude I don't know what I'm doing either felt very familiar. I just really liked their journey up through Palumpolum, okay, Lightning is super great.
And finally, I found Hope's refrain of "I know it won't change anything," whenever he talks about the murdering Snow plan, such an amusingly real thing-like an artist who says their work is shitty before showing you anyway, like a dude who tells you he's bad for you even though he keeps coming onto you. Hope keeps saying that phrase like an apology, like an excuse, but it's just a thin film over what he really wants to say: I want to murder Snow, damnit, and you should understand that.
(Now I feel bad for taking up so much space for Hope; Lightning and Fang were also fabulous favorite characters. But. This ramble's already getting too long and the general public seems to already agree that Lightning and Fang are fabulous, so.)
bonus: assorted shitposts
* someone give me the "Cocoon is south Manhattan" AU
* this game is literally Space Jam! the opening of chapter 12 is literally them warping into the Cocoon equivalent of the NBA finals, slashing some security guards in the face on national TV, and (admittedly accidentally) bringing some alien invaders with them.
(a friend of mine observed, as I was nearing the end of the game, that you can almost argue that FFXIII is a rhythm game, due to the tight timings required for so many paradigm shifts, an interpretation that is gross and i love it. by our powers combined, we determined that Final Fantasy 13 Is A Space Jam Rhythm Game TM, sorry, them's the rules)
* i've never seen a character ooze onscreen charisma the way fang does.
* i think they must have a rule that every FF needs an Iconic Necklace. i saw so many flashes to Lightning and Snow's damn necklaces.
* boy I'm so glad my brother didn't marry a twit like Snow, I'm pretty sure I would handle such a thing just as badly as Lightning does (also I'd forgotten how often she punches Snow? like damn the plot really wants to shit on the dude lol)
I'm obsessed with this interview with FFXIII's director, where he compares his game to (of all things!) a first-person shooter. Just, wow. What a bold claim to make.
He's right. The corridors, the carefully curated encounters, the manufactured-yet-keenly-felt sense of urgency-all of this parallels clearly with FPSes. But I read this interview after I'd finished the whole game, and "FPS" didn't cross my mind once. Neither have I heard anyone else ever make this comparison, which I think helps explain why it took me three tries to really get into this game.
See, when I first played FFXIII, I think on some fundamental level I misunderstood what the game was trying to do. Having paradigms choose my actions rather than hitting the "attack" button felt weird and uncomfortable and loosey-goosey. I couldn't figure out what the hell the star ratings after battles meant or if they mattered. Difficulty seemed to spike in random places for no good reason. All that, combined with the lack of opportunities to grind, made me think: I'm bad at this, I don't get this, I don't understand what the hell's going on in this plot, I give up let's drink.
It wasn't until I watched some clips from a speedrun that I decided to pick it up again-because, speedruns being what they are, they're forced to exploit all the tricks early on, and watching how precise their timing was, how crucial speed was to battles, and watching the careful dance of stagger-locking enemies in action-all that made me desperate to try it out myself.
So no, this is not a JRPG in the tradition of FF6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or even 10. There's a huge emphasis on speed, you're always pushing yourself to finish encounters as fast as possible, and while you can limp through the game by just using the Diversity paradigm all day every day, it's so much more satisfying to twiddle and switch to get the most blazing-fast combination of paradigms possible.
This, combined with the urgency implied by the narrow-corridors go-go-go level design, meant that, when I reached the much-talked about "open world" section of the game, I actually felt angry. I didn't like it! I wanted more runrunrun gogogo. I didn't want to wander around and grind, despite the fact that I enjoyed that in other Final Fantasy games. I didn't enjoy it in this one because it's a whole different kind of game.
(Luckily the open world section was more on-rails than it initially seemed, and I could blitz through it pretty quick to get back to The Real Game!)
So, yeah, part of the reason I thought FFXIII sucked was just because I didn't get it the first two times around. To be clear, a lot of that is FFXIII's fault: the tutorial takes too long, and the difficulty takes too long to ramp up. (Difficulty is a way to force you to pay attention, and in the absence of "trying to pull off crazy speedrunner strats," I found my attention drifting away before the game started to actually demand it.) But even if FFXIII had done a better job on those fronts, I wonder if it would've been misunderstood anyway. It's very, very hard to make something that is subversive and radical and also a 40+ hour game that the audience has certain expectations of.
(It got me thinking about other series that have had very "subversive" or unusual entries. The first things that came to mind was Logan, which was stunning, and widely praised, despite being an-X-Men-movie-that-is-not-really-an-X-Men-movie. But Logan had the advantage of very obviously inserting itself into a well-understood movie genre from the start; you watch the opening scenes of Logan and you know you're in a old-school Western, Lonesome-Doves-Clint-Eastwood sort of universe. FFXIII, by contrast, isn't a traditional grinding-and-spells RPG, but it's not like any other RPG I can think of, combat-system-wise-so it would have to put in a lot of effort to show both what it is not and what it is.)
Anyway, I'm glad I gave it a third shot. It was a tremendously fun ride and kept me entranced throughout, which is a super non-trivial feat; I thought my days of 40-50 hour JRPGs were behind me and was delighted to find myself proven wrong.
ii. polish
Do I just like broken, incomplete things?
As I neared the end of FFXIII, I realized that, while I liked the game a whole damn lot, I wasn't ravenous about it the way I was with FFXV.
This, despite the fact that FFXIII is a far more polished game. Combat encounters are surprising and engaging throughout, and I relished the threat posed by "mob" encounters in particular; fighting a swarm versus fighting just a single enemy forced you to pay the fuck attention and move fast (a lá Clickers in TLoU) in the most delightful possible way. There's no towns or random people-partially because, Toriyama said in an interview, they felt like they couldn't get them to look and feel as polished and smooth and perfect as the rest of the game. So they cut them out entirely. And you feel that choice, in-game; everything is streamlined as possible. Finally, the story-while, yes, very rushed and unclear in its presentation-does feel very deliberate. Things that are foreshadowed come back later with resounding force; each character gets a full development arc; the resolution feels "whole" and unsurprising.
Compare this to FFXV's combat system, which does have a pleasing gut-feel in terms of zipiness, but is not particularly deep, and does not rise much beyond frantic button-mashing. Compare this to how much FFXV does only half-assedly: the random fetch quests (that mysteriously dry up about halfway through the game), the "open" world that is strewn with inexplicable invisible walls to constrain you, the shitty feel of driving the car, the utterly incomplete feeling of Tenebrae, and so on. Compare this to the number of plot threads that are dropped or come out of nowhere, and the ridiculous number of DLCs they've spent trying to "fix" what was left out. FFXV tries to do everything, and its enthusiasm is endearing, but the result is a bit of a mess
And yet. I was enamored with that mess. The same instinct that pulls me toward writing fanfiction for something (the need to fill in what was left out, the impulse to guess at the author's intent, the potential for subversions in what was left unstated) apparently just pulls me toward things in general.
It's a bit similar to how I tell everyone that The Mysterious Stranger is my favorite Twain novel-even though it was unfinished upon his death, and the version that exists nowadays is cobbled together from a few incomplete drafts. Because I like seeing the seams and the mess.
It's weird! I'm weird! Does anyone else feel this way?
(It may be related to Tevis Thompson's observation that immersive games need an underworld, and in lieu of a deliberately-designed area of shadows and dangers and broken things, something that's just messy and unfinished can provide a similar effect. FFXIII is very glossy and maybe it'd benefit from a bit of an undertow, without actually losing its overall tightness and polish.)
iii. okay the story though
FFXIII is almost the boldest, most modern plot of any Final Fantasy game I've played.
I got my first inkling of this near the opening, when Sazh complains in some vague way about "the government" not giving a shit about the people. And naturally my overthink-y brain was like-woah, what exactly does this government look like? Other games have tackled "the church" or "the corporations" or "the queen" as vague forces of oppression, but "the government" implies, y'know, some sort of vaguely-corrupt democratic-ish body, probably with neoliberal tendencies and ugly Gilded Age politics. My interest was piqued; what did this game have to say about the modern state?
It only got more intriguing later on-when we reach the Nutriculture Complex, the clear implication is that Cocoon's economy is post-scarcity, that the fal'Cie provide literally all the technogadgets and food and shelter for the people, and wow, what, doesn't that change everything about how Society in General is structured? What's the point of jobs in that world; what do jobs look like? What does social status look like? Has it always been this way? Is it a recent development? We're told people are whipped into a frenzy to hate and fear Pulse; if they've always known plenty, where does the fear come from?
And more abstractly: in a world where God is very literally real, what does duty and the "right thing to do" look like? (The game pulls an interesting move of having you attempt to kill God-that is, one of the fal'Cie-in the opening act, instead of waiting until the end like FF games usually do; it's a remarkably thrilling encounter for that reason-it's digging in early and digging in hard.)
And the game sort of wants to engage with some of these questions. It's obviously implied that Hope's family is loaded, which hints at some social status issues that are never explored in-depth. We're told Cocoon has "tens of millions" of people, so like, the population of Canada-which implies a big, post-industrial society, which implies a lot of interesting problems-but we don't get much more detail than that.
But fundamentally, the bulk of the game is about being on the run, about desperate full-speed ahead clawing survival, so we can't get much more detail. I mean, sure, our protagonists eventually talk a big game about "freeing" Cocoon from the fal'Cie, but I'm not sure I ever really believed them. I thought they were in a horrible mess of a situation and they were running desperate from solution to solution, until they found the one that would let them turn and bite back.
And of course they are. It's what I'd do, if the whole damn world were desperate to kill me. And it's what Fang does, by losing her shit in the very last act; she's talked some high-minded principles with the best of them, but she'll throw them aside if that what it takes to save Vanielle. Things end up with a happier resolution, of course-but due as much to a twist of fortune than any real change of heart.
So that's the story the game ends up telling, a bunch of desperate fugitives scrambling for a way to keep moving, and it's a good story. But God! do I want to know how this universe actually works.
iv. annnnd the characters
Because I need a foil, I naturally looked up The Hottest of Takes on this game-that is, gamefaqs message boards circa 2012-to see what folks generally thought about it near launch.
Apparently everyone hates Hope, which surprised me. In a lot of ways I felt like he got the most complete and compelling character arc, at least until very late game when we get more into Fang's background.
Sure, he's "whiny," I guess, compared to the other characters, but there's a bit of the nerds doth protest too much there. For all the "Shinji get in the fucking robot" jokes on the internet, I've met a huge number of teenage boys who secretly related to the dude.
And like-as someone who lived with my brother through his teenage years, and who was a camp counselor for mostly-teenage dudes for many summers-he feels like a typical teenage dude. For all teenage dudes like to act like they're these devil-may-care rapscallions-the cracks show, when you're around enough, and you overhear your brother's weird hysterical tear-y breakdown in response to getting grounded, and you notice the warped and trembling expression on a guy's face after he sees the girl he likes across the room with someone else, and you have to talk down some dude who's gotten so frustrated at his computer program that he's either gonna cry or punch something and you're not sure what.
And in some ways that's better than the coping mechanisms everyone else is using. Sazh keeps his own thoughts and feelings so close to his chest that it's impossible for anyone to help him or change his mind until it's almost too late. Lightning is a perfect portrait of Every Twentysomething I've Ever Met Who Deals With Emotions By Just Working Real Hard, a tactic that plays out just as badly in this game as it does in real life. So what if Hope's bitching and whining and freaking out? At least he's doing it openly, so that shit can get dealt with. It's a little irksome that he becomes so preachy by the time you hit endgame, but it also makes some sense-he's spent the whole game trying to work shit out by talking and doing and feeling, so seeing it pay off with a bit of maturity is nice.
And the mentor-like relationship between Hope and Lightning felt true to my experience, and quite resonant. Every camp counselor's familiar with how some kiddos will "cling" to you-not in a creepy or bad way, just, they're drawn by some charisma you possess, you're old enough to be wise but young enough to be cool, and they want to be you. Lightning's stoic demeanor and tersely-worded instructions reminded me of all the overconfident technobluster I possessed in my late teens and early 20's; her sudden horror that dear God this kid's actually listening to me and dude I don't know what I'm doing either felt very familiar. I just really liked their journey up through Palumpolum, okay, Lightning is super great.
And finally, I found Hope's refrain of "I know it won't change anything," whenever he talks about the murdering Snow plan, such an amusingly real thing-like an artist who says their work is shitty before showing you anyway, like a dude who tells you he's bad for you even though he keeps coming onto you. Hope keeps saying that phrase like an apology, like an excuse, but it's just a thin film over what he really wants to say: I want to murder Snow, damnit, and you should understand that.
(Now I feel bad for taking up so much space for Hope; Lightning and Fang were also fabulous favorite characters. But. This ramble's already getting too long and the general public seems to already agree that Lightning and Fang are fabulous, so.)
bonus: assorted shitposts
* someone give me the "Cocoon is south Manhattan" AU
* this game is literally Space Jam! the opening of chapter 12 is literally them warping into the Cocoon equivalent of the NBA finals, slashing some security guards in the face on national TV, and (admittedly accidentally) bringing some alien invaders with them.
(a friend of mine observed, as I was nearing the end of the game, that you can almost argue that FFXIII is a rhythm game, due to the tight timings required for so many paradigm shifts, an interpretation that is gross and i love it. by our powers combined, we determined that Final Fantasy 13 Is A Space Jam Rhythm Game TM, sorry, them's the rules)
* i've never seen a character ooze onscreen charisma the way fang does.
* i think they must have a rule that every FF needs an Iconic Necklace. i saw so many flashes to Lightning and Snow's damn necklaces.
* boy I'm so glad my brother didn't marry a twit like Snow, I'm pretty sure I would handle such a thing just as badly as Lightning does (also I'd forgotten how often she punches Snow? like damn the plot really wants to shit on the dude lol)